Yahoo has agreed to acquire IndexTools, a leading provider of web analytics software for online marketing. The acquisition is intended to expand Yahoo's set of services designed to maximize its clients' online marketing efforts.
"Yahoo! believes that the ability to generate the most valuable and relevant insights is essential to seizing market opportunities and creating successful campaigns," said Bassel Ojjeh, senior vice president and head of Yahoo!'s Strategic Data Solutions group. "We expect that the IndexTools' technology platform will provide our customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!'s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world's advertisers."
The acquired technology is expected to extend Yahoo!'s current analytics offerings by adding capabilities to deliver relevant insights and metrics for online campaigns that run across the entire Yahoo! network. Following the acquisition, the first group of customers to benefit from these enhanced tools will be more than 150,000 small-to-medium businesses marketing on the Web with Yahoo!. Additional capabilities enabling third-party developers to monitor and optimize the traffic performance of their applications are expected to follow throughout the year following the acquisition.
Surf Canyon has released a tool that will improve your search experience and provide real-time personalization. The tool calculates instantaneous relevancies to queries and recommends pertinent search results.
The tool claims to: 1) Improve your search on Google, Yahoo! and MSN 2) Quickly locate relevant information that's buried deep within the search results 3) Provide real-time personalization based on user behavior
We have not had a chance to test drive this tool but if anyone has comments please do let us know.
Google has launched a new non-Google branded site called SearchMash which is designed to serve as an experimental testing ground for user interface ideas without the Google brand skewing the objectivity of the results.
Here are 14 observations on SearchMash: 1. The character count on the SearchMash homepage is even less than the Google.com classic homepage. 2. With SearchMash, there is no search button but there are instructions to 'hit enter to get results' but those directions disappear on the search results page. I always hit 'enter' myself versus clicking the "Google Search" button and I never click "I'm Feeling Lucky". I wonder how many people actually do. 3.The SERP page on SearchMash has a frame for the header which houses the search text field so it doesn't scroll with the page. 4. On SearchMash, you can only search web pages by default whereas Google shows you the options to search for images, videos, news, maps, blogs, etc. but SearchMash automatically gives you results for web, images, blogs, videos, and wikipedia oddly enough. 5. My search for 'flowers' on SearchMash yielded about half the number of results (14,200,000) than on Google (22,600,000). There is no time of how long it took to generate the results, the number of results showing on the page, or definitions. 6. The search results are on the left, and the images, blogs, videos, and wikipedia results are in the right rail along with a feedback survey which doesn't take you off the page. It doesn't seem to save your feedback results on the page if you navigate away to another site and then come back or do another type of search like image/blog/video/wikipedia and and go back to web search. 7. There is no pagination. There are ten results by default, designated by a "..." divider (not sure that's necessary) and when you click a link for 'more web results' or hit the space bar, the page expands downward until, in this case, I hit 100 results (so not sure what happened to my 14,300,000 results) versus paging to more pages as on Google. 8. The results are numbered which is also different from its Google counterpart. 9. The color palette is the same kind of blue and white just a softer blue and no yellow designated 'Sponsored Links' section and no heavy demarcation of section areas. So, if there are any paid links, they are not called out in anyway. 10. The font size is smaller by default (12px), all the text is the same size, the blue is a little brighter and there is no underlining by default for links (not even on mouseover but opting instead for background highlighting). 11. You can click to see images or blogs or video results which then loads in the left channel and web results moves to the top right column and whichever type of result you've clicked on doesn't show up on the right. 12. You can click on 'hide details' in the title bar to collapse the display of web or images results, allowing more results to fit in view. 13. Searches seem ranked the same as on Google. 14. From your SERP, you can also search within a site. So, my search yielded 1800flowers.com as a result, which I could click on to navigate to or search their site for 'flowers'. Cool! It will be interesting to see how this evolves.
Google is using YouTube to post videos that explain how, when, and why they collect information about searches, and how you can protect your privacy while using our search engine.
In the first video, you can learn about some of the information collected eg. IP addresses, cookies, and search queries and how they this information is used to improve your search experience as well as prevent against fraud and other abuses.
Google's search algorithms are designed to take your personal preferences into account, including the things you search for and the sites you visit. They provided the example about the Louvre in Paris. You are more likely to get results about the French capital than about Paris Hilton.
In the second video the are offering a closer look at personalization and the privacy tools available when you choose to personalize your search. Personalization has been an area that raises concerns about privacy, and Google wants you to understand how they personalize search results while protecting your privacy with tools such as “pause” and “remove” buttons designed to help put you in control of personalization.
Out Googled is a period series covering the strategies of companies and even entire industries to counter the enterance of Google (GOOG) in to their domain.
At its core Google is search and advertising, however the company has many tentacles and its looming presence can be felt in many areas such as; - online applications - mobile & telephony - ecommerce & content - social networking - gaming & virtual worlds - hosting services - measurement & analysis - publishing & broadcast - space technology
Google is rapidly moving into new markets and reshaping existing industries. As long as there is a web component to a product, given its sheer reach and power, Google is possibly better positioned to serve the needs of the 6 billion plus addressable market for web based products independent of platform.
So what is your Google strategy? Send us your story.
In a recent book published by O'Reilly called High Performance Web Sites, author Steve Sounders, Chief Performance Yahoo!, outlines tips, tricks and best practices to increase the speed of your web site. He outlines 14 specific rules that will cut 20% to 25% off response time when users request a page. According to the author even highly optimized pages, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.
The book explains how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. The book focuses heavily on the display time taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser as opposed to focusing on tuning web servers, databases, and hardware.
Answers.com (nasdaq: ANSW) reported that traffic on its web property dropped 28% last week due to a change in Google's (nasdaq: GOOG) search algorithm.
Answers.com is heavily dependent on Google for search-related traffic, and this has already impacted its stock price and possibly will online advertising revenues.
The company is in the process of acquiring Dictionary.com for $100M and has file a offering papers with the SEC to raise $140M for the related purchase. The primary motivation for the deal is to secure a steady source of direct traffic and mitigate from dependence on search engine algorithms.
Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers.com said, "On a pro forma basis, we expect at least 70% of our total traffic to come from people navigating directly to our Web properties or typing the term ‘dictionary’ in a search engine.”
This major shift demonstrates that the computing platform is transitioning from the desktop to the web. Microsoft's Windows division reported revenue of $3.808 billion in the quarter ended June 30. During the same period, Google posted revenue of $3.872 billion. Microsoft's Windows has an operating profit of $2.8 billion or 74% profit margin while Google's operating profit was $1.1 billion or 29% profit margin. Microsoft is projecting revenue growth of 9-10% in the Windows division this fiscal year and Google has been growing at 60% so far this year.
Google, which did not exist when Windows was introduced, is powering ahead and innovationing in many areas that Microsoft once ruled. Microsoft as a company still generates more money than Google, $50 billion versus Google's $14 billion. However, what is significant is Microsoft makes most of its money from licensing software while Google makes most of its revenue from advertising. Google is rolling out products that directly compete with Microsoft's core offering and a new generation of users are embracing Google's hassle free model where as Microsoft has had trouble making inroads into Google's strong hold in search and advertising.
Microsoft is trying to expand beyond its core Windows, Office and Server Tools business and into online services including search and advertising. Google is also making head way introducing onlines productivity solutions, mobile services, and data services that offer an alternative to Microsoft's offerings.
Google has acquired high resolution aerial photography camera company to boost Google's mapping service. Google's mapping technology power popular products such as Google Earth, Google Maps and it is a key piece of Google Local and Google Mobile services.
According to the Mercury, recent surveys found that less than one out of five users of Google's Checkout online payment service were happy with it and eBay's PayPal figure was more than double that (two out of five). In May, about 33 people visited PayPal's Web site for each Checkout visitor, up from an 11-to-1 ratio in December, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
At Searchnomics 2007, Google CheckOut claimed that 25% of all online transactions originate via search. Even if half that number is true, then there is a threat to Paypal's lead over CheckOut. In 2004, both the companies' had annual sales that were almost equal. However, revenue at Google tripled to $10.6 billion last year, while eBay sales increased 82% to $5.97 billion. According to comScore, Google had 120 million visitors in May which was 51% more than eBay's in the same period.
Google's Advantage Google is the most used and recognized search engine on the planet. Google is leveraging its advantage in search and advertising to complete the checkout flow for online payments. Google's strategy is to chip away at PayPal's leadership. Approximately 40% of Paypal's transactions orginate on eBay and some of these products compete with third party vendors. Previously, these vendors did not have much choice but to use Paypal as a payment system on their web sites. CheckOut provides them an alternative. Also, with CheckOut there is no holding of balances. It is an automatic overnight deposit to your bank account, where as on Paypal, a request has to be made for a deposit and it takes 3-4 days at best.
Paypal's Advantages PayPal is the most innovative and recognized web payment service ever. Paypal has the benefit of a large marketplace via eBay. Presently, eBay does not allow CheckOut on its properties. PayPal's service, generated a fourth of eBay's revenue last year and it has become increasingly important as auction sales growth slowed to 23% in the first quarter, half that in 2004.
Google is using Checkout as another tool to further entrench its search and advertising platform. PayPal is a profit and growth center for eBay. To secure its lead Paypal should move quickly to integrate itself as the online payment system with other major search engines such as Yahoo, AOL, Ask, MSN, Amazon to name a few. Alternatively, Google could open up to third party payment systems like Paypal and let the user decide which payment service to use. This way the market decides the winner.
Angry shareholders voted down proposals to tie executive pay to competitive performance and challenged the company's human rights policies in China at their annual meeting. The meeting was focused on the past three years and a little about the how the company intends to respond to Google's growing dominance.
"I am going to sell all my shares!" said Dotty Webber of Sunnyvale, CA. "He was talking about macaroni and cheese and how people like to eat it. There was nothing about their internet strategy. I went to the Google meeting and Eric Schmidt talked about how Google plans to help the world with the internet."
There was very little said about search, online advertising or Panama. Little to no mention about the acquisitions such as RightMedia or inroads Microsoft is making. No mention about the growing influence of MySpace among brand advertisers or the lock YouTube has on online video. "I don't see much change going forward, the performance of the past three years is set to repeat itself", said Eric Jackson, President, Jackson Leadership Systems. Jackson is a shareholder activist and has a even launched a campaign on YouTube against Terry Semel.
There was more talk about the human rights violations in China and Yahoo's efforts to change that. "They see this as a problem and are looking into it", said Patrick Doherty, Comptroller, The City of New York. A memorandum was issued outlining Jerry Yang's view on human rights to all.
As the company realizes that it can no longer compete with Google, it is saying the future of web search is history. Yahoo says the model for getting information via the browser is outdated. In the future relevant information will be delivered directly to readers. "The future of the web is about personalization. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user," said Tapan Bhat, VP, Yahoo!'s Personalised Home Page.
Interestingly, iGoogle is about personalization and Google has been making alot of noise of about it. Suddenly, it has become the core focus at Yahoo. Yahoo has been losing market share to Google in search and has been recasting itself as a company not focused on search. In fact Susan Decker, CFO, Yahoo has said previously that "Our goal is not to be number one is search". "They've realised they can't compete with Google on search." said Deborah Schultz, a Silicon Valley-based marketing consultant.
Search continues to gain wider adoption as an enabler for online commerce and soon may become the platform for commerce. Billions of dollar are being channeled into search as major marketers and brand advertisers see the efficiency of the medium. The river of money is finding its way mostly to Google. In fact the company does more in reveune in a single quarter than Yahoo does in a year. The entire Searchnomics conference is focused on the importance of search to web sites and online businesses.
On Tuesday June 12, 2007, Yahoo holds it annual shareholder meeting. Yahoo's Terry Semel was the highest paid CEO in 2006, with total compensation of $71.7 million, according to the AP. That is two times more than the $27 million in total compensation for the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid player, and higher than the typical pay A-list stars like Brad Pitt who earn $20 million a movie, plus 20 percent of the gross box office take.
There is even talk that Microsoft may buy the company. That would give Semel a graceful exit. However, the word is that the company is not attractive enough to any single major buyer to advance their product line, not at that price. Jeff Clavier, a venture capitalist at SoftTech, said: "The problem with Yahoo! is that they're trying to be all things to all people but they don't do any one thing particularly well."
All this is making investors, partners and customers very nervous. Several advertisers and partners are moving to Google; Friendster, a social networking site, moved to Google from Yahoo to better monetize its user base with Google's larger ad platform and deeper inventory. If this trend continues, Yahoo maybe history before search is.
According to a survey of over 1000 web analytics professionals, consultants and end-users: - 82% said web analytics was largely misunderstood within their organisations - 56% found web analytics difficult
Most respondents had at least two years of experience with the relevant technologies and approximately 25% had over five years experience.
According to Mr. Peterson only 8 percent of companies worldwide are taking a process-oriented approach towards web analytics. "In my experience, process is the key to both success and achieving positive and recurring return on investment from web analytics technology and staff", he said.
Mr. Peterson will be the opening speaker on web analytics at the up coming Searchnomics conference, Brett Crosby from Google and Avinash Kaushik and John Squire from Coremetrics will also be speaking at Searchnomics.
Farzad Nazem, Yahoo's CTO for the past 11 years has called it quits. Couple of weeks ago Susan Decker quit as Yahoo's CFO. An SEC, filing outlines that Farzad will not we able to work for a competitor such as Google or Microsoft for 3 years nor can he solicit or contract Yahoo employees.
Susan Decker, the former CFO of Yahoo has been replaced by Blake Jorgensen. He will begin his new job on June 4, 2007. Susan was famous for saying that "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search." and that is precisely the plan the company has been sticking to. Here is the press release from Yahoo.
One in 10 web pages contains malicious code that could infect a user's PC. Researchers at Google scrutinized 4.5 million pages to and 10% or 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads", sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user's knowledge, and a further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer.
Drive-by downloads are an increasingly common way to infect a computer or steal sensitive information. They usually consist of malicious programs that automatically install when a user visits a booby-trapped website.
"To entice users to install malware, adversaries employ social engineering," wrote Google researcher Niels Provos.
"The user is presented with links that promise access to 'interesting' pages with explicit pornographic content, copyrighted software or media. A common example are sites that display thumbnails to adult videos."
Some downloads, alter bookmarks, install unwanted toolbars or change the start page of a browser. However, increasingly, criminals are using drive-bys to install keyloggers that steal login and password information.
Other pieces of malicious code hijack a computer turning it into a "bot", a remotely controlled PC.
Drive-by downloads represent a shift away from traditional methods of infecting a computer, such as spam and email attachments.
The vast majority exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to install themselves.
Google will start to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious. Google, part of the StopBadware coalition, already warns users if they are about to visit a potentially harmful website, displaying a message that reads "this site may harm your computer" next to the search results.
"Marking pages with a label allows users to avoid exposure to such sites and results in fewer users being infected," the researchers wrote. This is similar to the browser install produced by McAfee called SiteAdvisor, which alters users to spyware, spam, viruses and online scams. SiteAdvisor, alerts users of web site's safety by assigning color codes next to the severity of the threat posted. However, the constant pop-up that alerts users of a sites threat level can get annoying and time consuming.
The Google report also identified the other methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages.
1. Spam email - are a common way to infect a computer. It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets.
2. Widgets - are small programs that may, for example, display a calendar on a web page or a web traffic counter. These are often downloaded from third-party sites. The rise of web 2.0 and user-generated content gave criminals other channels, or vectors, of attack, it found. For example, postings in blogs and forums that contain links to images or other content could unwittingly infect a user.
If your name does not come up on Google you are nobody according to an article published by the Wall Street Journal.
Today, employers frequently Google their candidate prior to even calling. Interviewers often search to see if what a candidate say on their resume could be verified online. More than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, according to a recent survey by executive networking firm ExecuNet. Nearly 40% of individuals have used search engines to look up friends or acquaintances with whom they'd lost touch, according to a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN unit.
Parents to be are turning to Google to find unique names for their children. They explain they want their children to stand out. Google, John Smith and you will get 209,000,000 searchresults and as people flood the web this is going to be a growing problem.
To increase visibility musicians are turning to unique sites like Gruuve where they can be found. Eg. a search for "U2" on Google is getting very noise but a search for "U2" on Gruuve brings us the band.
For web professionals WebGuild is building its own version on an online directory. People in the web profession can add themselves to the directory and use it as an online biography which they could provide to reporters, employers, for speaking engagements and more.
Google announced a redesign of the popular Google Analytics application. The new redesign will make the analysis even more accessible and easy to use while improving the data reporting capabilities of the Web site usage monitoring service.
Products like Google Analytics continue to rise in importance as companies strive to understand how people arrive at their Web sites and what they do once they are there.
Knowing that helps webmasters make their sites more effective tools for displaying online ads, providing sales leads, and generating e-commerce transactions.
According to Brett Crosby, Senior Manager, Google Analytics, "The overall goal of this upgrade is to make the product more intuitive to use and its data clearer and easier to digest so that it can be used effectively to make business decisions."
I was at "The Future of Advertising Conference" at Stanford and Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman, WPP, the largest advertising holding company shared some interesting stats about the advertising business.
1. WPP has a market share of approximately 25% of the global ad business, annual billings of $60 Billion and yet only $200 M of that is with Google. 2. Google's revenues are approximately $11 Billion and at $200 M, WPP is one of Google's largest customers. So Google's tail is very very long and they are just getting started. 3. He went on to say that Google is a FRIENEMY - Google is your friend in the short term and enemy in the long term. His reasoning was Google wants access to large advertising account, that they do not have relationships with and that is where the friendship begins. 4. There was little mention of Microsoft or Yahoo and it understandable as their respective foot prints in this space is still considered baby steps.
On May 16, 2007, the WebGuild will be having an event of The Future of Online Advertising with all the heavy weights including Google. The panel will share insight into the future of online advertising from several perspectives of paramount importance to web professionals, seos, sems or search engine marketers, web analytics professionals, online merchants, venture capitals, entrepreneurs and anyone that uses a website to acquire customers, service customers or monetize customers. There are still a few spots left. If you miss this then there is always Searchnomics, which delves deep into search advertising and search & marketplaces and must attend for all web professinal.
Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on why website owners need to harness the power of Search Engines and deploy SEM and SEO strategies to find customers.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are often shoppers' first stops when they're looking for a product on the Web and thus it is crucial for websites to show up prominently in search-engine results.
The is the focus of the upcoming Searchnomics 2007 Conference aimed at web and internet marketing professionals. Search has become the enabler for business. It is the most efficient medium connecting business and customers. Searchnomics is where the leaders of the search industry meet to share cutting-edge knowledge, best practices, and trends in:
• Search Engine Marketing • Search Engine Optimization • Design and Development • Branding and Promotion • Web Analytics • New Innovations and Opportunites
Local.com has launched "Local Promote" a service for small businesses.
The service allows small businesses to establish a Web presence with a landing page on Local.com, in addition to various distribution, pay-per-click and featured placement options.
The free basic version includes the ability for businesses to post and update business name, description and contact info. This will make it easier for lots of small business to form a Web presence.
Local.com is one of several companies along with Google Maps, Krillion, Gruuve and others that are enabling the "Webification" of the the local search marketplace. These services enable local business to establish a web presence easily and essentially expand the addressable market of online advertisers.
Once there, they are hoped to evolve into paid marketers, whether that be a subscription service like Local Promote, featured placement or paid search on Google.
There is now an award for the best search engine web site. This is the very first award of its kind to recognize leadership, outstanding achievement, and innovation in the search engine industry.
Entry is open to all search engine websites and there is no cost for participation. The winners will be decided by a panel of judges comprised of industry professionals and nominations received for each search website. Search engines websites are encouraged to have their users vote for their favorite search engine website.
To submit your entry please visit http://www.webguild.org/meetings/2007/searchnomics/search_awards.php.
For more information vist http://www.sys-con.com/read/367042.htm.
I rarely use Microsoft IE, so today when I searched using IE the Google search results page on IE was different to the search results page on Firefox. I guess Google is doing a browser detect and displaying different looks on the different browsers. I would like to hear everyone comments on this. Google search results on IE
Google's is the leader in search advertising. DoubleClick the leader in display ads. Display advertising accounts for almost half of the online ad market. Via a DoubleClick acquisition Google would become a dominant player in display ads and extend its reach with advertisers, ad networks, agencies and publishers.
Also, Google would gain key capabilities in the production, brokering and distribution of online ads. DoubleClick brings a network that runs ads across multiple advertising venues, such as AOL and Yahoo, providing Google with deep penetration into the overall online advertising market.
Google reported "Our goal is to make advertising on the internet work better: better for users with less intrusive ads and better privacy protection, better for advertisers with greater accountability and effectiveness, and better for publishers with improved monetization and cleaner site integration."
Google is entering the $65 billion U.S. TV-as-sales market. Google has announced the creation of an automated platform for ads running on EchoStar DISH Network's 125 networks. Google will gain access to DISH ad inventory from across all channels and dayparts; Google's platform will then allow it to sell that inventory and provide measurement on those buys.
The buying of DISH Network ads will work much like AdWords and use a web-based auction system. The real-time reporting allows advertisers to see how their ads performed on a second-by-second basis and adjust creative or daypart scheduling accordingly. Data will be pulled anonymously from the four million DISH boxes currently in use.
According to Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, this will allow for the ads delivered to be more relevant and therefore more valuable to the viewer and advertisers. Google will start by selling 30-second spots for broadcast networks, cable programmers and operators.
As part of the effort, Google is also launching a SpotRunner-esque program allowing advertisers to create TV ads on the fly. That toolset could attract some smaller companies that haven't tried TV advertising because of the high cost of creating those ads.
Advertisers can upload their TV commercials, bid on desired time and channel, and choose national area coverage. They can also choose to target by age demographic. The ads will be attached at the satellite operator level, not on the subscriber's set-top box.
The system is scheduled to start in May, and will sell ad space only on cable networks, including ESPN, CNN, Discovery, Lifetime, Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. There are no national broadcast channels or local affiliates involved in the deal yet.
Television experts say the deal is a stepping stone to greater advertising control, but that Google really needs to sign an ad deal with one of the major cable networks, which are known for their ability to target ads sometimes as narrowly as neighborhood level.
Google is also reportedly planning to launch a marketplace that matches up marketers who don’t have experience creating ads with agencies that do.
Google today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users' plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.
"We've got that whole organizing-the-world's-information thing more or less under control," said Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called "dark porcelain" research and development. "What's interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you - not to mention from you."
For years, data carriers have confronted the "last hundred yards" problem for delivering data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a "last hundred smelly yards" solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities. "There's actually a thriving little underground community that's been studying this exact solution for a long time," says Page. "And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and - splat - right onto your PC."
Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node, then plugging the other end into the network port of your Google-provided TiSP wireless router. Within sixty minutes, the Access Node's crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running.
"I couldn't be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product," said Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. "I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom."
For more information please visit http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html.
Rumors are circulating that DoubleClick is up for grabs and Microsoft might be interested. The price tag is $2.5 Billion (Microsoft rarelyl buys anything more than $1 Billion). If the rumor is true then the DoubleClick acquisition by Microsoft will represent a key piece in the dinosaur's battle against Google.
DoubleClick is the owner of Performics the largest search marketing company in terms of revenue. A big share of their business is with Google. The acquisition would make more sense for Google, which has a lock on search ad dollars to expand its on-line display ad business.
Here is why I think that the deal will not happen; 1) Microsoft does not have the traffic to channel the ad inventory. 2) Microsoft has no experience in the online ad industry and it is clueless when it comes to operating one.
Google reported that the rate of click fraud for which advertisers seek a refund represents less than 0.02% of all clicks. The company reported "every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone", thus is in the interest of Google to reduce this rate.
On the other hand ClickForensics puts the click fraud rate at 14.2%. However ClickForensics' rate is an overall average of click fraud across the search industry. The rate of click fraud across different ad industry sectors and different search providers varies widely. Those buying expensive keywords as triggers for their search ads, for example, are more likely to be targeted by click fraudsters than other advertisers. Also the second and third tier search engines with do not have Google's technology to detect nor correct these problems.
Also, ClickForensics and others that build their business model around this issue are not about to say that they are in a small and declining market. Then, there are others with inferior technology that are utilizing this issue as part of their marketing strategy.
The bottom line is search marketing is the most effective medium to reach customers and even if the rate of errors is 14% it is better than displace where there is little relevance and metrics.
Yahoo has officially roll-outed out its ranking model which is a major component "Panama", Yahoo's new initiative to complete and stay relevant in the online marketing space. With Panama both bid amount and ad quality will now determine an ad’s rank in search results.
The new ranking model is designed to help both search users and advertisers by generating better results, users will receive higher quality search ads. When users engage with these higher quality search ads, advertisers will receive more interested, valuable potential customers. We hope this further encourages you—our advertising customers—to continuously improve the quality of your search ads for users.
Google Checkout icon will be updated to better image to the Google Checkout buttons used by merchants on their website. The new image will help shoppers to more easily identify Google Checkout merchants. It will also be appear on the shopping cart on ads in the Google advertising network.
Google Checkout helps users find convenient, secure places to shop through tight integration with AdWords, the advertisements on the Google search results pages. Merchants who decide to offer Google Checkout as a checkout option on their sites are identified by a shopping cart when their ads are displayed on Google.
FAST has introduced a new product called AdMomentum. AdMomentum provides, publishers with a private-label contextual advertising platform, eliminating the need for third-party services and enabling them to better monetize their content and serve their clients (advertisers).
AdMomentum is targeted at online media companies, retailers and telecommunications service providers. It enables them to better sell locally and nationally, to both their audiences and advertisers. Publishers can grow their revenues and reverse the tide of ad dollars that are going to third-party services.
“Publishers want to maintain control of their revenue, serving their advertisers and audiences more effectively, and this has been difficult to do with third-party platforms." said John M. Lervik, CEO of FAST.
“Online ad revenue drives the digital economy, and no one has a lock on that revenue stream today,” said Sue Feldman, IDC's Vice President for Search and Digital Marketplace Technologies. “Online advertising – particularly contextual advertising – continues to soar. IDC believes that large publishers and ad networks can seize a significant share of this revenue and AdMomentum provides this infrastructure for publishers to manage and monetize their online content. It's a digital marketplace in a box."
"Contextual advertising continues to drive the advertising economy, and publishers everywhere are looking for ways to deliver more qualified leads to their advertisers," said Stephen Baker, CEO of Search at Reed Business.
“To meet the needs of our customers, we have to meet the needs of their customers – the readers and advertisers that support their businesses,” said Dylan Fuller, Senior Product Director at FAST. “There’s a reason why contextual advertising has done so well with readers and advertisers, and now publishers will be able to make the experience even better. They know their customers better than anyone else, and with the right tools they can better serve them.”
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on the WebGuild Blog including posts, comments, and external links, are those of the individual
authors and not WebGuild's.
At its core Google is search and advertising, however the company has many tentacles and its looming presence can be felt in many areas such as;
On Tuesday June 12, 2007, Yahoo holds it annual shareholder meeting. Yahoo's Terry Semel was the 
One in 10 web pages contains malicious code that could infect a user's PC. Researchers at 
If your name does not come up on 
I was at "The Future of Advertising Conference" at Stanford and Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman, 
Google today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users' plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.
Rumors are circulating that DoubleClick is up for grabs and Microsoft might be interested. The price tag is $2.5 Billion (Microsoft rarelyl buys anything more than $1 Billion). If the rumor is true then the DoubleClick acquisition by Microsoft will represent a key piece in the dinosaur's battle against Google.
DoubleClick is the owner of Performics the largest search marketing company in terms of revenue. A big share of their business is with Google. The acquisition would make more sense for Google, which has a lock on search ad dollars to expand its on-line display ad business. 
Yahoo has officially roll-outed out its ranking model which is a major component "Panama", Yahoo's new initiative to complete and stay relevant in the online marketing space. With Panama both bid amount and ad quality will now determine an ad’s rank in search results.
FAST has introduced a new product called AdMomentum. AdMomentum provides, publishers with a private-label contextual advertising platform, eliminating the need for third-party services and enabling them to better monetize their content and serve their clients (advertisers).
